Waking up in Rome, I hear the choppers overhead. The city is thronged with people here to say a final goodbye to Pope Francis. It makes me think of my mother, a devout Catholic who was fascinated by the conclave after Pope John Paul's death in 2005. She'd been among the millions of people who attended the mass he led in the Phoenix Park in 1979.

And, it makes me think of the mullions of people harmed by the Catholic Church, by the institution's willingness to deny and cover up the systemic sexual abuse of millions of children and the lives torn to shreds by dogma and doctrine.

That's a familiar tension for me: between the faith that gave my mother such comfort and the church which presided over such trauma. I wrote about it last year and to be honest, I'm still untangling all these threads. That's what I'll be thinking about as I wander around these historic streets, trying to avoid the crowds and enjoy the magic of my partner's homeplace. What it means to believe, and be destroyed by that belief. What it means to survive, despite the institution’s willingness to change. What it means to go on regardless.